Little Buddy

 

Happy 5th birthday to Harrison, or more affectionately known in our household as Little Buddy.  He’s had a weekend of busy-ness to celebrate his 5 years of life!  We had fun this evening looking back over all the pictures from his past 5 years.  This of course led to our looking back over all of the kids as they each begged, “where are MY baby pictures?”.  It was a neat walk down memory lane often times bringing smiles and laughter.  Crazy to see how much we have all changed….Joe and I included! 

Well, I am very thankful for the blessing that Harrison has been to our lives.  He is his own person who definitely, well, keeps us on our toes:)  He is confident and independent., something that often goes unnoticed for some time when you are #4.  He is a good “buddy” to anyone, older or younger, thus the nickname.  He’s often found tagging beside his oldest cousin or helping along his little sister.  He has had us laughing on many occasions and has taught me much patience. 

My prayer is that as he grows that the Lord would use his strong will and independence for His glory.  That Harrison would seek the Lord in all he does.  That as he grows he would not lose his sweet and compassionate heart.  And that he would always be our “little buddy”. 

I look forward to many more memories with this sweet freckle-faced little boy.  I know he won’t be a “little” boy forever but I will always treasure his sweet kisses and “I love you mom, you’re the best mom ever!”

A memory that will stick with me for some time is when Harrison was 3 and we would pray with he and Jackson at bedtime.  When we finished praying he would always say…”say Amen brother”, and we would all repeat, “Amen brother”.  Only Harrison.

Life

Well, life has continued “as usual”, whatever that means.  We had a busy weekend, like most.  The weather was warm and we had sap to finish up.  We pulled the spiles from the trees marking the end of Maple Syrup Season 2011.  I put a fresh coat of paint on the dining room while Joe and the kids worked in the yard.  Just one of those weekends.

On Sunday I finally finished up a project my husband set before me.  One I felt TOTALLY inadequate for…ever feel that way?  Well I won’t lie, I let it stress me out a bit.  But, I can proudly say it is finished and I am actually proud of my work.  After that I actually felt I had a little “free time” so I began cleaning up some of my photos being that I have them spread out between my laptop, an external hard drive, and our old desktop.

In the photo transfers I came across this picture and it made me smile.  I have no exciting pictures of yard cleanup or dining room paint, but I felt this one worthy of posting as it reminded me of some of the many special things in my life for which I am thankful.

In the evenings we’re reading through the Little House series as a family and are on the 3rd to last one (can’t remember the title).  We’re loving this one.  Even the little ones are anxious to hear what happens next.  It’s fun watching the family fall in love with Laura, feel compassion for Carrie, and despise Nellie and Miss Wilder…as if we know them personally.  Ahhh, the sign of a good book.

Now it’s late, the kids are sleeping, as is my husband.  The headaches continue.  Worse, I feel, than ever.  We’ve been reaching some 5-6 shots per 24 hour period.  To put that into perspective, we decided to look into what the actual recommended dose was…2 per 24 hour period.  We’ve decided to cut the doses in half in hopes that that will still do the trick.  Time will tell, tonight will tell.  I’m sure in just a few short hour(s) he will awake with a headache that causes him to pace the floors until the shot kicks in.  I pray, the kids pray, each night that the headaches will end.  One night we’ll sleep all night and realize, they’re over…until next time. 

Maybe tonight will be that night.  I’ll be praying for that anyway.

A Cluster of clusters

 

Spring is a wonderful time of birds, melting snow, warmer breezes, budding trees, rain, tulips, and lots of signs of life and newness.  For us, unfortunately, spring often brings with it a round of cluster headaches for Joe.  For those of you who are not familiar with these, they are awful, brain piercing, headaches that rear their ugly heads  about an hour after their victim falls asleep and can last for several hours before subsiding leaving the victim totally exhausted only to repeat the offense every night for the next 3 nights to 2 weeks, sometimes several times in one night.  They have been termed “suicide headaches” because the pain and desperation that they cause their victims have left them feeling they have no other option and have thus committed suicide. 

Lucky for us, after much trial and error (something I would not like to repeat), we have found Imitrex injections to be the solution.  This does not work for everyone so we feel truly blessed that this does for Joe.  He is still awakened every night but we have managed to find the right dose to eliminate the headache within 10 minutes.  Some nights these episodes repeat themselves up to 3 times.  It has definitely put a damper on our energy levels over the past week and a half, but, this too shall pass.  

We have managed plenty of activities despite the nightly shot rituals so here are some pics, of the kids of course, and our latest Donut Day. 

Easiest, kid-friendly donuts EVER.  Biscuits that the kids cut holes in with a water bottle lid.  Can’t beat it.

Fried in oil (ok, not so healthy, but good nonetheles)

Shake in cinnamon sugar and powdered sugar.

Looking good!

Then eat…we don’t do this often but it’s a definite highlight when we do! 

Cooking Up Something Sweet

 

A yearly tradition that our family started a few years back, is tapping our Maple trees in order to make Maple Syrup.  The first year we did it we tapped a few trees, cooked the sap down inside the house (I have since learned this is a big no-no) to accumulate about 1/2 cup of Maple Syrup.  It was a fun experience and we really didn’t put much time and energy into it.  Well as with most things our family takes on, this has now become a big production with a goal of 3 gallons of Maple Syrup when all is said and done.  Now that may not seem like much until you realize that in order to get 3 gallons of maple syrup you need to accumulate 120 gallons of sap.  Yes that is true, I didn’t accidentally add a zero.    So we have tapped 5 trees, most of which have 2 taps, and the kids have to collect the sap each day.  We then store it in a cooler in the garage in order to keep it cold until we can cook it down.  The season lasts approximately 3-5 weeks, so we’ll see where that takes us!

As you can see we use our own make shift collection devices (i.e. Wal-mart grape juice containers) to collect the sap.  Then on an available day we start a fire and continually add sap, basically for the entire day, until it cooks down enough to bring inside and finish off to syrup. 

This year we were limited on available days and so started a fire on a cold, wet day, with cold, wet firewood.  As you can imagine, it took awhile to get a good fire going.  So once we got it rolling we decided that we were keeping this thing going until we cooked all available sap!  So we cooked it for 2 long days.  We kept the fire going the first night and my dear husband took the rainy shift that lasted until 4am and included a total downpour.  We rigged up a sort of cover to keep the fire and sap free of rain water, but that didn’t do much for my  husband who was standing out in the rain tending to the fire at hourly intervals.  I took on the 4am and on shift (luckily after the rain stopped) and we managed to get over 1 gallon of syrup!!!!  This is very good.  Only 2 more gallons to go.  We will hopefully have much drier wood to work with on the next appointed sap cooking day, but if not, we’re ready!

 

This is our newest four-legged addition, Woodroe.  He was the only one still awake at 4 am when my shift started.  He’s adjusting well.

Disney Vacation 2011

 

While it seems that I have fallen off the face of the blogging world, I have not!  I am still here.  Just trying to get my family back into some sort of routine after a very busy winter!  We spent Christmas vacation in Texas, then off to New Jersey two weeks later for a baby shower for my new niece, and then loaded up the camper and hauled it many states south to Disney World in Orlando, Florida.  It was a wonderful 2 week getaway that our family needed.  We had never taken our camper nearly this far, and through the mountains, so I was a little nervous about the whole trip.  I must say it really was smooth sailing all the way.  Aside from horrendous gas mileage, the trip down and back really went off without a hitch.

After about three days in sunny Florida, we all managed to contract strep throat!!!!!!  What’s really crazy is that we managed to visit the same walk-in clinic in Orlando that we went to the last time we were in Florida (2 years ago) battling strep throat!  Needless to say, we’ve saved that clinic’s number for future reference.

After a few days of recovering (I managed to read an entire book that I couldn’t seem to put down) and relaxing, we were back at it.   I have close to 500 pictures, most of which seem to be of my children with various characters.  I will not bore you with all of them, but I will post a few of my favorites.  Btw, if you are ever planning a trip to Disney, feel free to pick our brains as we have been there  a few times and have some great meal recommendations.

While dining with Pooh and friends our waitress managed to spill an entire tray of drinks down Jackson’s back.  Aside from brief embarrassment, Jackson was awarded a new shirt compliments of Disney World.

Jackson was very pleased with the shirt the waitress picked out for him!

Somehow we managed to walk into Disney Studios at just the right time and we were escorted by a cast member to a small side street where we were greeted by Minnie, Donald, and Daisy. 

Waiting for the parade.  It was quite warm that day and we picked a seat right in front of the castle, and right in the sun.  Luckily we were all armed with hats and sunglasses.

For some reason my kids INSIST on riding the teacups.  Spin as fast as you can until you are so sick you can’t see straight.  At least that’s about how it goes for me.  So I take pictures from outside of the ride while the kids spin their hearts out.

Joe’s a real trooper,  He rides with the little ones so they can have a chance to man the wheel.  Really they aren’t strong enough to spin the tea cup so it was a pretty calm ride.

My favorite 5 kids hanging out at the Tree of Life in the Animal Kingdom.

Our schedule was extremely busy BUT we did manage to schedule one day at the pool.  It was a beautiful day for the pool.  The sun never felt so good.

This little girl was a bundle of energy the entire trip.

I’ve never had a kid this young not crash sometime during the day or before we made it back to bed for the evening.   London was a little energizer bunny.  The sheriff Woody hat was too cute on her and that, a plush Eeyore, and a few plastic princess figurines was what she had her little heart set on.  Each of the kids had a gift card for spending and she managed to save her $ until the second week where she happened upon these 3 items.  She looked at us and said, “I want to keep these”.  Her mind was made up.

On our last evening we gathered with Chip and Dale for a campfire sing-a-long and then stuck around to watch Lilo and Stitch on their big screen outside.  It was a great trip that we look forward to repeating.  Maybe next time we’ll just spend 2 weeks hanging out at the campground.  Leaving more time for rest and relaxation, and just to enjoy what the campground has to offer.  I know we all would have loved another day at the pool!

She did finally crash.  Only it was AFTER we returned home!  Oh well.  She (and the rest of the family) had a lot of fun soaking up the warm Florida sun and being together.  With all of that said, it’s good to be home!

A Man’s Best Friend

 

They say that a dog is “a man’s best friend”.  I don’t know about “best friend” but they certainly do become a part of your family.  Thirteen years ago Joe surprised me with a little puppy.  He had picked him up assuming, as the ad stated, that he was a “lab puppy”.   A lab he was not, but he was the cutest thing we had laid eyes on.  We let him sleep in our room.  We took him out in the middle of the night when all we wanted to do was sleep.  He became king of our world pretty quickly.  We had lost Dakota only a few short weeks prior and he filled a void in our hearts.

On Friday, February 11, we said goodbye to our dog Monroe.  His hips couldn’t do the job anymore and he just couldn’t walk at all.  Our big, sweet dog had to be put to sleep.  I knew this day would come sometime soon but I wasn’t prepared for the actual day that we had to make that decision.   The decision had to be made but it will take time for life to return to “normal” around here without him. 

Unfortunately that is not the end of grief in our household.  While we were away on vacation our little “Leo boy” was hit by a car and killed.  This one hit the whole family pretty hard.  We had known that our other two dogs (Monroe was still alive at the time) were getting old and their time was coming.  When we received the call we were prepared for it to be any dog, but Leo.  The kids were devastated, as were Joe and I.  Funny how an animal can have that kind of effect on your heart.  So we returned from vacation without Leo. 

Life is slowly returning to a more normal pace, but their absence will take some getting used to.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love ANYTHING, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal.  Wrap it up carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket – safe, dark, airless – it will change…”  C.S.  Lewis

A Baby Shower

 

Last weekend I (along with 4 of my 5 children) had the opportunity to spend a few days with my family in New Jersey.  We drove out that way on Friday, spent the weekend and returned Monday.  It is a 12 hour drive from my front door to theirs, and my only goals were to make it there before dark and before the NYC weekend traffic. 

I succeeded in both, but I must admit my wings were a little tired  We made great time and the kids were good sports about it all.  They were so looking forward to seeing their new cousin that it made the 24 hours of travel worthwhile, that and the chance to watch more movies than would every be allowed in a 24 hour period.

Unfortunately I took VERY few pictures.  I managed one with Sydney and my brother, one of the cake (best cake I’ve ever eaten I must say), and one of baby Paige.  I’m saving up all of my picture taking energy for our trip to Disney World.  We leave tomorrow and I have a lot to do before then.  With that said, I’d better just post my last 2 pictures and get off of here! 

My younger brother Drew and Sydney.

The adorable baby Paige.

Managed to drum up one more of baby Paige and Sydney.

Holland, London, and Harrison were also there with me.  Jackson enjoyed some one-on-one time with Joe for the weekend.

Goodbye for now.  The next time I get on here I hope to be in sunny Florida with Mickey and friends!  See ya then!